Isolation and Crystallographic Identification of Four Isomers of Sm@C90

Four isomers with the composition SmC90 were obtained from carbon soot produced by electric arc vaporization of carbon rods doped with Sm2O3. These were labeled Sm@C-90(I), Sm@C-90(II), Sm@C-90(III), and Sm@C-90(IV) in order of their elution times during chromatography on a Buckyprep column with toluene as the eluent. Analysis of the structures by single-crystal X-ray diffraction on cocrystals formed with Ni(octaethylporphyrin) reveals the identities of the individual isomers as follows: I, Sm@C-2(40)-C-90; II, Sm@C-2(42)-C-90; III, Sm@C-2v(46)-C-90 and IV, Sm@C-2(45)-C-90. This is the most extensive series of isomers of any endohedral fullerene to have their individual structures determined by single-crystal X-ray diffraction. The cage structures of these four isomers can be related pairwise to one another in a formal sense through sequential Stone-Wales transformations.